escarpment project

escarp is a text-message-based literary journal aspiring to put poetry and prose back in people's pockets. Why? We think our friend--a graduate student in English--summed it up best when, after saying she was enjoying escarp "A lot," added, "If it didn't text I wouldn't read it."

We'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not that's a sad statement about the status of literature today, but we think it's a pretty clear endorsement of our goal with this project: use cell phone technology to put poetry and prose--albeit in a condensed fashion--back in people's pockets, in a rather beeping, pulsing, flashing, hard-to-ignore fashion. Poetry. Fiction. Non-fiction. All of them hard to ignore for the first time in a long time. Enjoy it, and look for more from the escarpment project in the future.

TUNNEL TRAFFIC is a casual, topical reading series based in the Hampton Roads area. Topics are announced a week before each reading (readings currently held bi-weekly) to give participants a week to write or find suitable material. By focusing on the topical, we intend to provide a regular prompt to writers of both poetry and prose and give them a non-workshop/publication--but still public--environment in which to address the topic. The casual "off-the-cuff" environment allows us to provide much-needed low-pressure reading/performance experience to writers.

We also welcome work not written by the reader. When writers aren't feeling up to writing on a topic, they're still encouraged to plumb their memories or explore new work in search of something meaningful to share.